During the 11th Chinese American Film Festival (CAFF),Yu Li’s Ever Since We Love that stars BingBing Fan and Geng Han will be screened. Adapted from a novel by Tang Feng, the movie has captured the attention of the crowd since the crew starts shooting. Gossips and discussions flourished around the content of the novel and the choice of casting and the director. The story takes place in 1990s. A group of medical college students, Qiu Shui (Geng Han), his girlfriend Bai Lu (Xi Qi) and his roommates, live an ordinary college life until they meet Liu Qing (Bingbing Fan), a mature and beautiful woman.
The novel
Ever Since We Love is an adapted screenplay based on the novel Everything Goes. Written by Tang Feng, a leading writer who was born in the 1970s, the novel has its unique tone of blue and humor. The purity and straightforwardness of the novel resembles The Catcher in the Rye. Talking to the readers from the perspective of Qiu Shui, a male medical college student, the story reflects on the sweet, and at times regretful experience of youth. Tang Feng himself adapted the screenplay for the movie. He smiled with tears after watching the completed movie and said, “It is there.”
The cast
Bingbing Fan plus Geng Han, a fresh combination that will naturally stir discussions. Bingbing Fan has been director Yu Li’s top choice actress and has appeared in most of her movies. Bingbing has also been awarded several times for her brilliant performance in Cell Phone, The Matrimony, Lost in Beijing, and Buddha Mountain, among other films. On the other hand, the choice of Geng Han, who originally is a singer and dancer, to be the leading actor in Ever Since We Love, fosters the curiosity of the audiences. By breaking his image of a super pop star, Geng Han tries very hard to be close to the image of an ordinary college student who has no advantages in his appearance and no talents; a normal youth.
The director
Many people think that the novel is not story-based and can’t be fluent in the expression of a movie. But director Yu Li thinks that the novel is actually full of images. Instead of making the movie merely through Qiu Shui’s perspective, Yu Li is taking it both ways: the experience of sweet and bitter youth is visualized by both the male and female perspectives, Qiu shui and Liu Qing’s respectively.
Yu Li has never been a director that strives for sensory stimulation. Controlling every details of her movie, she is able to carry out what she believes a fascination of an unwritten life. She hopes the audiences will be transported and feel the happiness, pain, power and charm of each life. She is one of the few directors who can accurately capture the complexity and poetry of life through female perspective.
Just like how Tang Feng describes lives as unfinished stories, immature characters are at different stages in their lives and they can’t be judged by good or evil. With a second chance, people will still make the wrong choices and this is true and funny for everyone.
The annual Chinese American Film Festival is hosted by Edi Media Inc. and supported by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China (SAPPRFT), the Embassy of China in the U.S. A., The Consulate-General of P.R. China in Los Angeles, the Consulate-General of P.R. China in San Francisco, and American Film Institution. It has become a memorable party that unites Chinese and American film industry.
From November 1st to 30th, the 11th Chinese American Film Festival will holds a series of events such as the welcome dinner, the Chinese-American film industry summit, the opening ceremony, the award ceremony, and movie screening in Hollywood, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Besides the directors, actors and actresses, producers, and other experts from the film industry will participate, we eagerly welcome you to join us in this unimaginably great party!
Want more details about the 11th Chinese American Film Festival? Please visit our website at www.CAFilmFestival.org or www.CAFilmFestival.cn. Or call Edi Media Inc. at 626-856-3889.